The Man From Hong Kong(1975) In Brooklyn Tomorrow Night

The Man From Hong Kong(1975)was one of the Aussie first movies I sought out when I first became interested in the Ozploitation genre. If I remember correctly, It was the trailer for Not Quite Hollywood that sparked my interest even though it would take me a couple years to see the documentary. I figured it was a good starter movie to immerse myself into the genre, since I was already a seasoned professional with Kung-Fu love. I looked at it as a winning situation in screening. How bad can a movie be starring Jimmy Wang Yu, former Shawscope star and international dickhead extraordinaire? The answer was NO WAY IN HELL could it ever be considered anything but a classic to those of us who are fans of genre cinema. Not only are the martial arts scenes primo, which was my initial draw, but the action was non-fucking-stop and I couldn't keep my eyes off the damn screen. Fights, car chases, and explosions up the wazoo.....The Man From Hong Kong met every expectation I had and then some. I find it to be one of those action movies that I have based all others on since I first watched it a couple years back.

And now you New Yorkers who have never seen it can experience the same enjoyment I have, because it's screening at Spectacle Theater tomorrow at Midnite.

IMDB says - "It's 1975. A time of funky pants. Muscle cars. Ridiculous sideburns. Porn-star moustaches. Bruce Lee still rules the world of action movies (despite being dead), and I haven't even been BORN yet.

Sydney. Jack Wilton (The Laze) is a bad-ass crime lord with a penchant for cravats, orange velvet sofas and all things Oriental. Under the cover of his legitimate import/export business, he runs an international drug-smuggling outfit with connections in Hong Kong. Two federal narcotics cops, Grosse (Hugh Keays-Byrne, Toecutter from Mad Max) and Taylor (Roger Ward, Fifi from - er - Mad Max) manage to catch Win Chan (Sammo Hung), a member of this Hong Kong connection, following a well-staged--yet amusingly pointless--fight sequence atop Uluru (sorry, Ayers Rock). Chan is to be extradited, as soon as he testifies against Wilton. But the Aussie cops hadn't counted on the extradition officer being a certain Inspector Fang Sing-Ling (Jimmy Wang Yu), of Hong Kong Special Branch ("What's so special about Special Branch?" you ask? Watch the movie and find out!). Fang is a loose cannon, to say the least, and is intent on bringing down Wilton's entire operation himself, no matter how much of Sydney he has to destroy in the process."

Did you know (thanks to IMDB)....According to the DVD Audio Commentary and the documentary Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation! (2008), the fight scene atop of the elevator between Wang Yu and Brian Trenchard-Smith allegedly involved real fisticuffs, the punches thrown at the latter allegedly being real punches. Reportedly, the two had a strained relationship during the shoot. As Wang Yu is credited as a co-director in some prints, as such, this movie represents an instance where a film's rival two directors have literary fought it out on the set.

Saturday June 18th at Midnight @ Spectacle 124 S. 3rd St., (at Bedford Ave.)Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Bloodsucking Ozzie-Style with Thirst(1979)

Directed by Rod Hardy (Nick Fury: Agent of Shield-TV movie, lots of Television)

Produced by Antony I. Ginnane(Harlequin,Patrick,Treasure of the Yankee Zephyr)

Starring Chantal Contourri(Barry McKenzie Holds His Own,Alvin Rides Again, and Again! And Again! And Again!), Max Phipps(The Cars That Eat People,The Road Warrior,Stage Fright)and Henry Silva(The Italian Connection,Almost Human,Kidnap)



After seeing Not Quite Hollywood(review here) a couple months back, I decided it would be in my best interest to watch as many "ozploitation" films as I could get my grubby little hands on. So far, the quest has been pretty successful. I could probably do better if I weren't A)so lazy, and B)put my other cinematic interests aside for a long while. Since I don't see myself going through a severe personality change anytime soon, it's just going to have to remain this way. So my Path to Oz is also going to end up being the Path of Least Effort, because that's how we do...Man!

Like many attached men in the world, I occasionally like to share my movie watching experiences with the one I love. Since Mary doesn't share the same love for action/adventure that I do, I wanted to pick a film she would like. Fact: Chicks like vampires. There is just something about pale skin and eternal suffering on earth that really pulls at the female heartstrings. My girlfriend is no exception. This is a girl who secretly watched the first two Twilight movies in secret and refused to tell me for fear of ridicule. So getting her to watch a vampire movie takes no twisting of the arm. So this made Thirst(1979) pretty easy choice for us. Not only do I get to fill my ozploitation quota, but I get to enjoy it with my favorite person.

Kate is the last living blood relative of the infamous Lady Bathory. Being a modern women, this means very little to her, if anything at all. Why would it? Kate isn't exactly the type of women that screams blood-hungry mass murderer. Looking at her, you're more prone to think "holidays in Paris" rather than "bathing in the blood of virgins". Unfortunately, not everybody thinks that. As it turns out, there are people in the world that care about Kate's lineage more than she wants to know, and this is why Kate gets kidnapped. It turns out that Lady Bathory was responsible for the founding of a cult of blood suckers, who like to think of themselves as a "brotherhood". This "Brotherhood" has been pulling strings behind the scenes for centuries, as you would expect any secret society to do, and as vampires have moved beyond attacking villagers in the dead of night. The 70's vampire has ditched the hunter/gatherer lifestyle and followed in humanities path with a more agrarian/industrial lifestyle. Not only are humans, known affectionately as "blood cows" farmed for there life-sustaining fluids on premise, but the Brotherhood has also perfected the art of mass production for market gain. There is even a filtering process not unlike pasteurization.

It doesn't take Kate long to figure out what's going on, and she's not having it. I mean, really, what kind of person would want to be given eternal life and treated like a god? After an escape attempt or two, Kate is put through a rigorous "conditioning" to help her see the brighter side of her captor's lifestyle. Will she finally succumb and take her place amongst the blood-sucking elite?

If you read the IMDB reviews of Thirst, you'll see a good amount of "not your typical vampire movie" type of commentary. My question to them is, what is typical? If a person's idea of typical is Bram Stoker's Dracula, then I would have to agree. This is not your typical vampire flick, but how many of the memorable vampire films are? Lost Boys, From Dusk Till Dawn, The Hunger..to me these are the most memorable vampire films, and they have nothing to do with the regurgitated-many-times-over story of the Count. Unless a person has watched nothing but Universal Horror knock-offs their entire life, I have a hard time following the idea of a "typical vampire flick"

Thirst was memorable and different, but I'm not going to hold it to the highest regards like I do the three films previously mentioned. Yes, it's a different take on the vampire mythology, but is the concept of farming humans for sustenance really that original? Maybe if you've never seen a sci-fi or dystopian movie in your life, but for those of us that have, the concept is nothing new. Thirst was also quite the slow burn, or as some reviewers like to say, moody and atmospheric. If you just pulled a 10 hour work day, this is probably not the movie to sit down and relax with, unless you plan on falling asleep to it. It doesn't take long to figure out what's going on, but it feels like forever before you feel like something is actually happening. When shit does go down, pay attention. Especially when it concerns Henry Silva and a helicopter.

I would recommend Thirst to those fans of horror who have more of an affinity of The Shining than those who have seen all the Saw films. Thirst is the kind of movie you sit down with a loved one over a bottle of wine to watch, maybe two couples. For those of you party screeners, Thirst is going to be a bad choice unless you want to clear out a room oir arranging a slumber party. It's just not that type of movie.

Dead End Drive-In(1986)

Since falling in love with the doc Not Quite Hollywood the other day, I have become obsessed with the idea of tracking down as many of the movies covered as I can. As I explained in that review, I'm not well versed in Ozploitation, but I sure as hell want to be. With so much to choose from, I wanted to start off my obsessive sequence of Aussie reviews with the movie that grabbed at me the most, and also because it was one of the last films covered. According to the industry specialists, it is also considered the last big Ozploitation film before the movements death at the hands of the straight-to-video industry. If you've seen the documentary, or read the title of this blog entry, you most likely know that I am talking about Dead End Drive-In(1986).

Dead End Drive-In takes place in a bleak future, I guess some people might refer to it as "Dystopian", although the only "planned and structured society" seems to take place in small, controlled areas, namely drive-in theaters. This isn't common knowledge though, as we can see from the ignorance of our hero, Jimmy, known affectionately as Crabs. It's hard to tell if crabs is an idiot, or just a really good guy. Society is crumbling around him, but he spends most of the time jogging and boxing. Despite the fact that he can't go anywhere in Sydney to deliver pies without run-ins with the punker gangs, known as carboys. Carboys are your typical muscle-car bullies. When they aren't harassing people on foot or in compact cars, they can be seen scavenging parts from wrecks and abandoned cars. Not exactly the friendliest of people.

After a couple of run-ins with the carboys, Crabs decides taking his girlfriend, Carmen, on a date to the drive-in is a good idea, even though society is crumbling around him. In order to impress his runaway girlfriend, Crabs steals his brother's '56 Chevy. Being typical hormonally-driven teens, the two kids ditch paying attention to the flick and move straight into bumping uglies in the back seat. Wrong move. Just as things started getting heavy, both back tires are stolen, rendering the Chevy incapable of movement. Must be the carboys again, right? Wrong, it looks like the cops are trying to get a piece of the scavenging action too, but not for the same reasons. When Crabs wakes up in the morning, he discovers that he's not the only one stuck at the drive-in. There are close to 200 youngsters living in the theater parking lot like it was some kind of permanent Phish lot, and none of them seem to want to escape. Crabs doesn't get it, and keeps up living a healthy lifestyle despite the punk rock parking lot party that is a constant around him. At this point everybody, including Carmen, has come to except that watching movies and eating junk food is their future, no matter how concentration-like there new life is. Crabs ain't going out like that though, and will do whatever it takes to get out, even kill.

Despite his clean living, I felt the Crabs must have been one of the biggest, fucking idiot I've seen in a movie. Despite being told time-and-time again he wasn't going anywhere, he didn't get it, and I don't think it was just blind determination. I really think his IQ was somewhere in the lower, yet functional, double-digits. No matter how many times he was told, even by his girlfriend, to "relax and have fun, you're not going anywhere" he refused. I think he genuinely believed if he had tires and gas, the drive-in prison actually had an open door policy. Besides, why would he ever want to leave? Society is crumbling on the outside, and he can live of life of junk food, drugs, and drive-in movies. This doesn't sound too bad to me. It actually sounds like the perfect way to spend my time as society goes apocalyptic. Granted, I don't think I could ever go all white power when the Asians are all bussed in, like everybody else did, even the black prisoners(?), but these things happen. That's why it's best to stay out of politics when shit hits the fan.

My first Aussie flick, after seeing Not Quite Hollywood, was completely worth the time I took away from Facebook and the boobtube. I had everything I expected(punks, car chases, sexytime and explosions) and even a little more I didn't expect(racism and heroic idiocy). This is definitely one of those movies I'm going to pass off to friends who have seen the documentary, and I'll probably even watch it with them.

I Finally Got Around to Seeing Not Quite Hollywood(2008)...

....and it only took me two years to do it. When Not Quite Hollywood:The Wild,Untold Story of Ozploitation!(2008) first started hitting the festival circuit back in 2009, it seemed as if every genre blogger and podcaster had seen it and something to say, most of it being praise. Now that I think about it, I don't recall anyone writing anything negative about the doc at all, and I understand why. Thanks to the power of Netflix Instawatch, and too much free time on my hands during a rainy day, I finally put forth the effort to watch the highly regarded documentary. I must say it was time well spent.

Just in case you were unaware this film existed (I speak mainly of the friends of mine who click my Facebook Link), Not Quite Hollywood documents the rise of fall of Australian genre cinema, known affectionately in the cult movie community as Ozploitation. From it's beginnings in testing the censors with skin exposures, to it's apparent demise, not unlike the American Drive-thu and Grindhouse culture, with the rise of VHS, the doc outlines the history of the genre. As you would expect from any documentary about film, there are shitloads of interviews with filmmakers, actors, and stuntmen...too many to actually name with the exception of Quentin Tarantino. There are also film clips up the anus, again sounding like pretty standard doc garbage.

What sets this film apart from other docs, aside from subject matter, is the rock video editing that keeps one such as myself, who has the attention span of a cat, interested for close to two hours. Two hours with no bathroom or snack breaks is something that happens very rarely, especially with an informative film. Blurbs from interviewees never last more than 30 seconds before a movie clip, typically speaking over the clip. The director obviously knew that when making a doc about movies, people want to see clips of the actual movies rather than a bunch of old fuddy-duddies talking about filming. The only problem with this concept is these old fuddy-duddies are Ozzies,who happen to be pervy and quite crazy, so the stories that are actually being told are far from boring. Throw in a soundtrack of classic glam rock from Down Under, and you have the makings of a perfect documentary.

I was a bit disappointed in myself knowing very little about the genre, being a total dork when it comes to this shit. Out of the dozens of films covered, which I assume were a small part of the actual industry, I could only name 2 or 3 of the movies as flicks I have actually watched. On the flipside though, I took down the titles of most of the films covered for future viewing purposes. I may not know much about ozploitation right now, but by the end of the month I guarantee I'm going to have close to a dozen under my belt.

All together I can say the movie did what it was supposed to, expose the world to a lesser known film industry and make people want to seek these Australian rarities out. If you screen Not Quite Hollywood and don't immediately seek out a copy of The Man From Hong Kong or Patrick, there has got to be something wrong with you. Keep in mind that the director, Mark Hartley, currently has a new documentary on the festival circuit called Machete Maidens Unleashed! which explores the hotbed of exploitation filmmaking known as the Philipines. I've seen the trailers and read the reviews, hopefully it doesn't take me 2 years to take the time to watch it.

Running on Empty(1982)

I’m not much of a fan of stand alone flavor. Not that I hate mono-taste, I just don’t believe most foods work well by themselves.Can you imagine eating broccoli without butter or salt? Sure, vanilla ice cream is good, but the taste flies off the map when chocolate of any type is added? From curry to French cuisine, everybody can agree that food is always better paired with other tastes, and if you don’t agree, then you are probably the Emperor of the Land of Boring and feel sorry for you.

The same can’t always be said for film. Most Hollywood productions cater to a certain taste and don’t travel to far away from it.I myself am guilty of the same crime, as most of us are. Romantic comedies, modern, big-budget action, and chick flicks are all the same to me, but I will watch horror time-and-time again no matter how many times I’ve seen decapitations and blood sprays. Some might consider it boring and flavorless. FSM knows I do a great deal of the time, but this is how most people’s taste towards movies tend to veer.

You might ask yourself, ”Where the fuck are you going with this food and movie comparison?”

And my answer to you will be Running on Empty, a 1982 Ozploitation phenomenon that left me with a flavor explosion in my pants. I’m not going to say it was the best movie I have ever seen, but it certainly had a great deal of fun going on. If you think that a JD flick with a New Wave twist sounds interesting, then keep reading on my friend.

Mike is a factory worker with a fast car and a model girlfriend. After long days in the shop he likes to spend his days working on cars with his Italian best friend, Tony, and hanging out with his model girlfriend,Julie. Julie used to date Fox, the local Hot Rod King Douchebag, and he is none too happy about her picking Mike over himself. After a skirmish with Fox on the beach, Mike agrees to race him for money and loses, which causes a pretty severe ego bruising. After some taunting from Fox, Mike agrees to race Fox again, this time with the stakes being doubled. Unfortunately, Mike doesn't have the money, but he has a plan. He figures if he road trips in the country he might be able to raise the funds racing hicks and winning. See Mike has a fairly big ego for a city boy and doesn't realize that the country folk might be a bit more car-oriented than he prides himself on. After an unfortunate altercation with the local color, Mike realizes that his big plan might not have been the best idea. Fortunately, he and his posse are taken under the wing of and old, blind greaser and his plans for living at the top of his hot-rod game once again blossom when the old rockabilly helps Mike jack up his car to an even better state just in time for the next big cock race against the supremely creepy Fox.

Unfortunately, things don't go quite as planned and life plans don't follow Mike's dream storyboard. But he still has his honor and ego, which apparently is all a man needs in 80's Australia.

I've just got to say I think this flicked kick ass. I know nothing about cars and gearhead culture(I've never even owned a driver's license), but classic race movies like this are always fun. I may not know the operation but I understand the capability. I am, anyhow, a fan of aussie movies from this era. Great stunts, explosions, and sex. There really isn't much more to say about that. Yes, there are lots of bad movies to come out of Australia during that time, but I will still sit back and laugh at the ridiculous situations that come out of said movies. Everybody can get a chuckle out of cars that explode on impact and the willingness of the director to cater to the ego of the American male audience. If you love 70's and 80's action movies, where the male super-ego shines like a supergiant star, this is where it's at. Not to mention that the main characters provide so much entertainment as to make the movie abundant in the personality department.

I thought of the characters in this flick as an Australian government experiment in cloning the Stray Cats, but with that crazy Aussie persona. It was very New Wave era, but with less hair net and more rockabilly. The cars were fuckin' classic and the fashion was a perfect blend of Teddy Boy and glam punk. Seeing the old, blind greaser dance to a rockabilly tune, with his road hard betty put a huge grin on my face and I would have been even more satisfied if this was the soundtrack. Fortunately, I am a huge fan of synth OST, and the soundtrack was mainly this. For me, it was the best of both worlds, those being 80's synth and roots rock. The soundtrack keeps the movie interesting, in that 80's mixed with 50's JD sort of way.

Although, from what I read on IMDB, this is the quintessential Aussie Hot Rod-head movie. Most likely for the race sequences. This wasn't the crowning acheivement for me, as I have already let known. Not only was the story durable for the action crowd, but some of the comedy was spot on for those of us who look for that in a flick. For example:

"Whats ya name?"

"Piss off!"

"Piss off? What type of a name is that?"

"Its polish. Pissov's a Polish name!"

Comic genius as far as I'm concerned for a movie of this caliber.

As far as the negative is concerned, I must admit the acting wasn't great and some of the stunts were ridiculous, but i expect that out of ozploitation. It was slow at points, but the action scenes and character acting pulled it out of any slum. The fact is if you are a fan of the genre, love rockabilly culture and hot rod movies, this movie is for you. I've seen a great deal of bad shit out of the southern hemisphere and this is not one of those movies. This is something I can watch time and time again and still get the same thrill as the first time.

And here is the trailer: